After reminding Ash to take care of her health, Anaya turned around and left.
Only then did Ash let out a sigh of relief.
Thankfully, the class was about to start; otherwise, if more people had gathered around her, she would have wanted to dig a hole in the ground and hide.
Sometimes, being too responsible as a class rep wasn't always a good thing.
It made situations like these unbearably awkward!
"Class is starting."
Just as Ash was silently lamenting, the teacher with thick glasses walked into the classroom.
Ash glanced at the schedule on the blackboard, pulled her language textbook out of her desk, and stood up with her classmates to greet the teacher at the daily call of "Stand up!" from the class monitor.
...
"Damn it! I'm still so angry!"
After class, the loudest and most hot-tempered student in the class, Pavel, slammed his desk with a fist, venting his frustration.
"How could even the World League Tournament, the most prestigious event, have this kind of blatant collusion? That's outright cheating!"
"Those shameless teams from Rhendia and Sahalir—why don't they just go %@&#%#...!!!"
"If they hadn't destroyed Quintus's Spirit Beast, we totally could've made it to the finals—or even won the championship!"
"Ahhh!!! I'm so mad! We were so close!"
Apparently, the recent matches had left everyone feeling outraged.
Pavel's complaints quickly resonated with the entire class.
"Seriously, they'll do anything to keep their precious Oryza on top. They've got no shame—&￥%..."
"Exactly! I watched the replays last night, and it just made me angrier every time. How can anyone be so shameless?"
"And that so-called champion, Hope from Oryza... how does he still call himself the world's best Beast Master? He got two rounds taken off him by Alexei! If the match had gone on, Alexei absolutely would've won! Ugh, it's infuriating!"
As the classmates vented their frustrations one after another, the once-quiet classroom quickly turned into a lively marketplace filled with animated voices.
Since Ash didn't know what had happened, she could only pretend to study while keeping her ears perked up.
Soon enough, she pieced together the reason why everyone had been in such low spirits this morning from the conversations around her.
The answer was simple: once again, Montis's national team had been stopped at the semifinals of the World League Tournament.
Why "once again," you ask?
Because this was the third time Montis had been blocked from reaching the finals.
What made it even more frustrating was that this year's team was considered the strongest national team Montis had ever fielded in the history of the World League Tournament.
Yet, against all expectations, they still ended up as the "gatekeepers" of the finals.
How could that not make people angry?
From her classmates' indignant complaints, Ash also learned that the loss wasn't due to the Montis players underperforming, but rather because other countries had gone to disgraceful lengths to prevent Montis from winning the championship.
Take the frequently mentioned incident of Quintus's Spirit Beast being severely injured—it was a deliberate act by the Rhendia and Sahalir teams.